Page 86 of Taming Achilles

I turned away from Lea, because I was seeing red. The red of despair, not anger. The one holy prayer, the one wish that I had kept in my heart was now being shared, and maybe I was sullying that dream by saying it out loud. As if letting it out of my mind, and giving it voice would give it the power to fly from my reach.

“And I’ll dress to match, in black and white, and feathers too if she wants.” I remembered that moment she had bought us matching masks. White, like swans. And I had worn it through the streets, as we held hands, and danced in the frigid rain. When it turned into snow, we waltzed in San Marcos Square to a single troubadour that we paid hundreds of euros to, as long as he played her favourite song - Amigos Para Siempre. “I still have those masks, you know? The white ones, with the black and white feathers. They’re in Strathlachlan. At the country house.”

Lea didn’t seem surprised by any of this. If anything, she seemed annoyed as if I was telling her a million things that she already knew. And maybe she did. The stoic little assassin had a way of knowing things, and never saying them. I had mistaken it for a lack of feeling once, until I saw her during her first, real, wedding with Callum. The way they had gotten married in the middle of the night, and her stunned, disbelieving eyes had whispered their vows with a quiet, soft conviction that wasn’t like her.

She was a chest-pounding, straight faced, matter-of-fact kind of woman. No tact. No subtlety. It made her easy to understand.

But in that moment, at their real wedding, with only me and her brother in attendance, I had seen a layer of her that Callum brought out. She loved him immensely, in her own way. And I was jealous of it.

“I want Callum by my side as my best man,” I said, hiding a small smile.

“That’s a given. Of course.” Lea almost looked annoyed. “But you know that.”

“And she needs Chloe by her side.” Lea’s mouth opened, as if she was giving an understanding ah!, but made no sound. “That won’t happen until she’s accepted Callum’s with you. Then she has a chance of accepting us. I need her beside Pip, because she is the only family she has anymore. Ever since she chose to disown her own father.”

“And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Lea said. My head snapped up, my brow creased. “Before you got all … gooey on me.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “That was so sweet, I now feel sticky. Gross, by the way.”

I laughed out loud. Her abrupt response to my unloading of my soul was, again, just so … Yankee of her.

“A’right, you frigid little assassin,” I said with a chuckle, feeling a little more like myself again. “What do we need to talk about?”

“Killing her father, of course.”

I blinked, staring at the women in front of me. She was deathly serious. She considered dry humour to be such a British trait. So … she was really discussing murder. She had to be.

“You want to kill Sir Victor Fox?” I asked carefully, looking up and down the hall to make sure no one was coming. “Are you mad?”

She gave me a little smirk. “If you won’t marry her, and they’ve disowned each other, then I don’t see the issue.”

I looked at her like she belonged in a looney bin. She stared back at me like I was a particularly obtuse child.

“Let me see if I’ve got this whole, in His Majesty’s Service bullshit correct,” Lea said, as if she was explaining something really obvious and was getting annoyed with my lack of understanding. “There’s a super secret group … but not so secret because my husband and Pippa seem to know all about it. An organisation called the Sideshow that’s run by her father.” I nodded and she continued. “Her father wants her dead because she’s not doing her part to elevate the family, and further his little side organisation?” I nodded to confirm her assessment, and she continued. “Her father is the one who didn’t want you two together?”

I crossed my arms, and glowered at the woman. She was going to deliver a blow.

“So he’s the single flashpoint of all your misery.” She shrugged as if this was incredibly obvious. “So kill him.”

“I can’t just kill her father.” I said the words because I felt like I had to… but why couldn’t I? Lea had a point but … “He’s her father.”

“A shitty father.” Lea lifted a brow.

“Then what?” I waved my arms in the air in agitation. “We kill him and they’ll go after her, because they’ll think she was involved.”

Lea looked at me like I was a moron again. Really, the woman had an arsenal of expressions that were all designed to tell you that you were a raging choob.

“Do you not know me at all?” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’d make it look like an accident. Or suicide.” She looked to the side, as if she was deep in thought.

“No!” I said, suddenly afraid that she’d take it on herself to kill Victor.

“Come on, I bet you’d have fun killing him,” she said with a little curl on the corner of her lip. “I’d help you do it. Gratis!”

“You’d assassinate someone at no cost?” I said with a chuckle. This was one strange rule she had. She didn’t kill for fun. Only for pay, as if that made it more ethical.

“You could consider it a wedding gift.”

“You’re off your rocker,” I said with a laugh, suddenly feeling okay with this whole situation. “I’ll think about it, but I don’t think she’d appreciate killing her kin.”

“Whatever you say,” she shrugged. “But she doesn’t have to know.”

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